The system drive controller is an important part of system performance. In most modern boards your drive controller will run off of the PCI-e bus. The PCI-e bus performance can be affected by poor trace layout as well as many other design choices that show up on different boards.

For testing we use Sisoft's Sandra and Everest.

SiSoft Sandra

The X58A-UD9 was not the fastest performing motherboard for HDD (well, SSD) performance, but it was more consistent than others we have tested. We did not notice the usual slow down when overclocked as we have seen on many other boards.

Everest

Stock HDD Performance

Overclocked HDD Performance

Stock USB 3.0 Performance

Overclocked USB 3.0 Performance

Everest shows us more information on the X58A-UD9's HDD performance. It is also important to remember that much of this performance is based on the device attached. Still, these are some good numbers with the Corsair Force 120 SSD.